


But You'll Peek Through

by Barkour



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, Resolved Romantic Tension, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 11:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7358548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's weird, the things you get used to when you've been stuck in space for years. How much you miss home. Socializing regularly with only six people. No wifi. Your cranky boyfriend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But You'll Peek Through

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Noah and the Whale's [Five Years Time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8YCSJpF4g4).

Years of sparring with Keith had taught Lance a fair few things. Most of what he'd learned was how to survive. Adding another five inches to Lance's height had not provided him with a noticeable advantage, and so it was a rare oopba (day, he thought, day) when Lance disarmed Keith in the opening forms. 

Keith scowled and jogged to collect his bayard. He was favoring his right side. Lance frowned but shouldered his sword and went for mocking. Anything gentler, Keith would take as an insult.

"Three moves," Lance yelled. "That's a new record! Well, for me. You're not losing your edge, are you? Shirking your training with Gladiola?"

Keith gave Lance the finger. Lance faked mortal wounding. He was still clutching at his chest and making hacking sounds when Keith, red-faced and beetle-browed, returned. 

"Quit it," said Keith.

Lance straightened from his death huddle and smoothed his hair back from his eyes. "Or, you know, you could quit. Recognize that I'm just the better paladin."

"In your sick dreams." 

Keith settled carefully into a wide-legged stance. His weight shifted on his toes; he distributed it evenly. God forbid Keith admit discomfort. The blade extended from his bayard and he held it, calmly, at the ready.

Lance was stuck with a practice sword from the armory, as his bayard refused to produce anything other than long-range ordnance. Ol' Blue knew what she liked and what she liked was lasers at distance. He pulled a flashier move, twisting the blade through the air. Keith's expression did not change.

"What do you know about my sick dreams, wash-out?" 

Keith snorted. "Plenty. You talk in your sleep."

"And you listen?" Lance shuddered but set his shoulders at a long angle, practice blade up in a defensive position. "That's creepy stuff, Keith. That's a little thing us Earth folk call stalker-y. Stalker-esque? Stalker-ish."

Shaking his black hair back over his shoulders, Keith made the first move, a fast side-step to the left that brought the tip of his sword up to jab. Lance, using his longer stride to his advantage, took two steps back then darted in the same direction Keith had side-stepped.

"You're the one who tries to wrestle me in your sleep." 

Lance blocked a quick strike. The blow vibrated along his forearm. He pulled too quickly out of the stance and staggered.

"I do not," he protested. "I cuddle. It's charming!" He stuck his nose up. "Nine out of ten surveyed say they wish their partner was more physically expressive of their love, outside of sex. I read that in Teen Vogue, or somewhere."

Keith transparently did not recognize Teen Vogue or acknowledge it. "Yeah? Well, you sweat." 

Keith changed direction midway through a step. Lance got his sword up in time to send Keith's lash scraping along the edge. The screech made Lance's teeth hurt.

"That's what people do, Keith. They sweat. Sweating is what happens when you sleep with someone. Sometimes," he complained, "I feel like I'm the only one who cares about if I get enough sleep at night."

"Maybe you should shut up," suggested Keith.

Three rapid-fire strikes, each a clean metal noise. The brief struggle, Keith's weight against Lance's weight, then the parting from one another. Sweat dribbled under Lance's shirt collar. Give him a nice vantage point and a long-range weapon any day. 

"So-o-o-orry," said Lance. "Not all of us can be as boring and out of touch with our feelings as some people I won't name, because I am discreet, and never let it be said that Lance Sanchez y Borrego is a gossip even when there are only six other people to gossip with. _Keith_."

Something like a smile flicked at Keith's mouth. "You just did it."

"Made you fall in love with me all over again?" Lance swept long fingers through his sweated hair and preened. "Don't worry, Keith. I won't hold it against you. After all, even someone as boring and out of touch with their feelings as you couldn't last long against ack!"

Lance doubled over clutching at his leg. His sword clattered noisily on the training floor.

"Jerk!" he snapped. "Butthole! Butthead! I was opening my heart to you!" 

"You were opening your mouth at me," said Keith. Instead of offering Lance a hand, Keith holstered his bayard on his belt, stripped his gloves, and sat gingerly down beside Lance. 

"Stop stink-eyeing," said Keith. He yanked his shirt collar up to swipe at his face. "I already beat you."

Sulkily Lance sat upright. "After I beat you." He kicked his legs out and crossed them at the knees. "So, really, we're even." 

Lance glanced sidelong at Keith, now slowly stretching. Keith's lips thinned and paled as he ran his arm parallel against the right leg.

"Your knee okay?"

"Knee's fine."

"Your knee's not fine," said Lance.

"You just asked if it was okay. How would you know?"

"Because I know when your knee's not fine, and it's not fine."

"Huh!" Keith muttered, "They should've put you in medic classes, cargo pilot."

"Cram it, wash-out," said Lance, "you know, I technically outrank you. So I order you to show me your knee."

"Or what?" Keith looked up at Lance through his raggedy, overlong black bangs. "You'll ground me, doc?"

"I'll tell everyone it was you that ate all the cookies Princess Romelle sent Allura."

Keith said, "Shut up!"

"Oh, yes, Princess Allura," Lance sang, "it _was_ Keith took the cookies from the cookie jar."

"They were oatmeal raisin!" said Keith, already rolling up the trouser leg.

Thoughtful now, Lance said, "I think when we overthrow Zarkon that should be the first thing Allura does, is outlaw putting raisins in cookies. They look like chocolate but they aren't!"

Keith snorted at this. Shifting about, he slung his leg across Lance's lap. "You eat too many sweets."

"And you push yourself too hard," said Lance in the same withering tone. "Who're you trying to impress? We all already know you're some tough, socially weird badass."

"Thank you, Lance," said Keith. He smiled. "It's nice to hear you admit the truth."

Lance snarled, "I didn't say you were better than me," though he framed Keith's knee gently between his hands.

Keith's nostrils flared. His mouth soured. He looked to the high, black ceiling and the white lights there. 

The scar tissue was a knot at the in-facing side of his kneecap. A relic of a confrontation with Zarkon on some dustball planet, without aid and without Lion. That Keith had survived with his shattered knee: a miracle, of sorts. Lance dug his thumbs in on either side of the knot. He rubbed into the knee. After a minute of this work, Keith's tensed shoulders began, in delicate fractions, to unlock.

"You should talk to Coran," Lance said. "Maybe they can do something about the muscle now."

"It's fine."

"What if you're out of your Lion again and it acts up?"

His calf muscle tightened then eased. "I haven't fallen yet."

"Stupid," said Lance. He massaged the knee harder. "You'll fight better if you fix it."

"I'll fight better when I work through it."

Lance worked his tongue in his mouth. There was no getting around it. He sighed gustily.

"You know," he said haltingly and through his teeth. "That your knee. Is the only reason I got the best of you."

Keith laid on his back. His loose hair made little waves and caught puffs around his head. He ought to braid it to keep it out of his face. Once, before a certain rescue mission to a dustball planet, Lance would have thought it a righteous jealousy that ate at him at this sight. 

Here, now, his weaker leg softly flexing in Lance's grip, Keith spread his sweat-gleamed arms wide and closed his eyes against the lights.

"Yep," said Keith.

"You could pretend," said Lance.

A sweet smile worked Keith's lips. 

"Nope," he said.

Lance rubbed at Keith's knee and thought. He'd been so god damn happy to see Keith alive that he hadn't even minded that Keith nearly speared him in the head with the sword. He thought mostly of how easy it had been in the end to admit the truth, first to himself and then to Keith. 

How annoying, Lance thought grumpily. It felt like a cosmic joke that he should have fallen in love with Keith. He guessed the punchline was that he didn't even mind it.

He sighed.

"Hey," said Keith, eyelashes dark on his paled cheeks. "I thought I was the one with the busted knee."

"Quit milking it, Gyeong," he retorted. Keith would rather cut his own leg off than milk the knee for pity. What a perfect jerk. Lance made faces at him.

"Stop making faces," said Keith.

"I'm not making faces," said Lance. "Besides, you have the scary face."

Keith's smile, pulling more to the left than the right, showed his teeth. The left incisor was set at a crooked angle. His cheeks rounded with his smile. Lance's cheeks did not round when he smiled. His face was too thin for such dear touches.

Lance considered fitting and spitting at the injustice of it. Instead he only sighed again and cupped Keith's scarred knee in his palm and stretched out above Keith to kiss him once and lightly.

He felt the sleek turning of Keith's smile against his lips. To these lips, Keith murmured, "You should shave."

Lance frowned and kissed him again. Keith fussed his lips up and tried to shake Lance's kisses off, turning his head quickly one way and then the other.

"I mean it, Lance."

"Mmmmm, no." Lance stroked his thickly stubbled jaw. "Actually I'm thinking of keeping it. Growing it out."

"Don't you dare," said Keith.

Lance made mournful sounds. "Oh, Keith. It's okay if you're jealous because you can't grow a beard."

Keith could not grow a beard. Lance had suffered a month of Keith glaring into the mirror every morning trying to will the four oily black strands to multiply. It was impossible to piss with Keith growling, "I can grow a beard," at his own reflection.

Glaring now, Keith raked his gaze over the entirety of Lance's beard. His eyes narrowed. Lance tipped his head at a number of fresh angles so as to provide a full gallery.

"I hate it," said Keith.

Lance huffed. "You love it. Gimme another kiss."

Keith slammed his hand against Lance's chin, directing his fresh pucker to the air. Lance swung his arm in a close chop so as to knock Keith's hand away. The situation escalated. Keith got an elbow in Lance's chest and rolled him over. Lance hooked a leg around Keith and rolled them both over again. Keith was laughing as Lance cradled his neck and began, very vengefully, to rub his beard on Keith's clean-shaven cheeks and jaw.

"Oh, yeah?" said Keith. "That's how it is?"

"That's how it is," Lance gloated. "Try and get out of this one."

With a single fluid motion, a sort of artisan shove, Keith got Lance slammed once more on his back. Keith's hair was a mess and he was smirking. The trouser leg had unrolled some down his knee.

"You always leave yourself open," said Keith. 

"I was going soft on you because of your leg!"

Keith shook his head, mock-sad. "You're easy, Lance. Real easy."

Lance refused to acknowledge that these words were spoken.

"When I grow my beard out," Lance began.

"You're not."

"I'm going to rub it on your neck when we're sleeping. I'm going to cuddle you so hard with that bad boy. Pidge's going to ask if you have a rash and Coran's going to rub _ointments_ on you."

"Ugh," said Keith. "Don't."

"Or," said Lance, "you could talk to Coran about your knee."

Keith eyed him. Lance was beatific in the face of his own a) brilliance and b) selflessness. 

"That's right. I'll sacrifice my own rugged good looks. For you, Keith. My loving and even, some might say, adoring boyfriend."

"Nobody would say that," said Keith.

"Yeah, you're right," said Lance, "they'd say you're a jerk who'd gnaw his own leg off before listen to the guy he's been sleeping with for a year."

"Fourteen months," said Keith.

"Who's counting?" said Lance. "I mean, aside from you. You probably mark the days off on your calendar. Today is the four hundredth oopba since Lance first held my hand."

"How many days do you think are in a year?"

"We're in space, does it matter?" He thought wistfully, only a moment, of: his abuelita's cooking, his sisters (Mariana would be in, what, her first year at university?), the salt smell of the ocean, Mom and Mama kissing outside the synagogue. The pain was less every year gone. 

"They call days _oopba_."

"Fine," said Keith, with the look of a man forced to do something good for his well-being when he wanted to eat broken glass. "I'll ask Coran to look at my knee."

"And I'll keep my beard," said Lance, to Keith's "hey!" and a light punch to his hip. "So that when we return to Earth, everyone will know that I am a man."

Keith said, "I'll shave you in your sleep," and stiffly, he stood.

Lance shivered as though touched by a ghost. "Stalker!" he said, but he took the hand Keith offered him.


End file.
